What is compute engine simply put it refers to customizable virtual machines running in Google cloud you can select the right machine for your needs from predefined or custom machine types predefined machines come with general-purpose combinations of CPU and memory.
If those don’t meet your needs then you can choose the custom machine types which allow the selection of an exact number of CPU and amount of memory you need for your workloads there are three different machine type families general-purpose computer optimized and memory-optimized general-purpose machines are best suited for general workloads like web servers and databases.
If you’re not sure which family you should choose just choose general-purpose instances it is recommended to use compute-optimized machines for compute-intensive applications such as high-performance computing gaming electronic design automation and single-threaded apps.
If you have memory-intensive workloads such as in-memory databases sed HANA or real-time analytics use memory-optimized instances and you can add graphical processing units to accelerate computationally intensive workloads like machine learning or medical analysis now how do you use compute engine well.
It’s easy just select the type of machine and where you want it and the instance gets created for your use in that specific location there are some features of compute engine that make it an awesome choice it allows for live migration so your app can keep running during maintenance mode without interruptions.
It provides sizing recommendations for example if you are using a bigger instance for a workload that can run on a smaller instance then you can save cost using these recommendations and for your container workloads, it supports deployment of containers now what does it cost to use compute engine.
It is simple you paint for what you use but you can say it cost by taking advantage of some discounts sustained your savings are automatic discounts applied for running instances for a significant portion of the month.
If you know your usage upfront you can take advantage of committed use discounts which can lead up to 57% savings without any upfront cost and by using short-lived preemptable instances you can save up to 80% these are great for batch jobs and fault-tolerant workloads along with lots of other use cases like running websites and databases on compute engine you can also use it to migrate your existing systems into Google cloud or even run Windows applications.
By bringing your own licenses or using the included licensed images to noodle more on compute engine check out quartered google.com slash compute
